POWFest is the only film festival in Portland and one of a handful nationally that spotlights women directors by showcasing their work and strengthening the community of women in film. We'll get a round up of films and feature two local filmmakers..

Standing on the threshold between innocence and experience, a young ballerina glimpses a hidden truth about her future as she teeters between light and dark, order and chaos. 9 is a coming of age tale about the mysterious and sometimes frightening initiations that usher us into our becoming.

Redemption Trail is a contemporary Western about two powerful, yet deeply troubled women – refugees from political and personal trauma — who have both chosen to flee a past that haunts them. The daughter of a murdered Black Panther revolutionary, Tess, (LisaGay Hamilton) lives off the grid on a Sonoma vineyard, fiercely detached from all connections. Her hermetic life cracks when she gives reluctant shelter to a desperate young woman, Anna (Lily Rabe) who has attempted suicide in a nearby woodland. An unlikely alliance forms between the two, where other close relationships have failed.

A short film adapted from Dmae Roberts’ radio documentary ‘Mei Mei, A Daughter’s Song” first heard on NPR in 1989. Using the original radio piece as a soundtrack, the film mixes dramatized and archival footage, historical photographs and illustrations to tell the story of Dmae asking her mom, Chu-Yin Roberts about her childhood in Taiwan when she was sold as a child during WWII, suffering abuse, starvation and how she was saved by a female Buddha. This is the first film of a larger half-hour film adaption of the award-winning radio piece.
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It’s 1996 and advances in AIDS medications leave a group of men who faced near certain death a sudden, unexpected hope for a future. Puppy is a writer of pornography with a Marxist slant; an accident has left him confined to a wheelchair but his sexual fantasies know no limit. Sexually frank, hilarious, and deeply moving, this award winning play is a West Coast premiere, and playwright David Zellnik will be visiting Portland during the run.